The Real Life Locations of Hollywood Ending

Hollywood Ending is out in just two days! If you’re on Facebook on Wednesday night, A Cozy Experience is throwing an awesome online party to help celebrate the release! We’re doing a Hollywood theme with special guests Shawn Reilly Simmons and Renee Patrick. We’ll also be giving away from great prizes. So please stop by if you’re around. Click here!

As you can imagine, I’ve been ridiculously busy prepping for the launch (and not trying to stress about about it too much). I loved doing the locations of Hollywood Homicide post so much that I wanted to do it again. Below you’ll find three locations you’ll find in Hollywood Ending when it comes out on Wednesday!**

Runyon Canyon

Photo courtesy of Hikespeak.com

Runyon Canyon can probably best be described from this excerpt from Hollywood Ending: Aubrey wanted to meet at Runyon Canyon, which was technically a park situated in the Santa Monica Mountains. Key word: technically. It was Hollywood’s outdoor workout of choice. On a good day, you could find more celebs than on NBC’s primetime lineup. Even on a bad day, you might catch a news anchor. If you entered from the southern end at the bottom of the hill on Fuller Ave., it wasn’t uncommon to pass outdoor yoga classes before making your way up a hiking trail that ended way up on Mulholland Drive. At least that’s what I’d heard. I’ve never made it that far. Haven’t even tried.

Fun Fact: I once was a complete smart aleck to Jake Gyllenhaal while hiking there. You can read about here.

Shrine Auditorium

Photo courtesy of Shrine auditorium.

The granddaddy of all the fancy venues is an LA landmark across the street from the University of Southern California campus. The Shrine has been around since the 1920s and has had more movie icons in its seats than you’d find on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At one time or another, the Shrine has hosted the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, American Music Awards, BET Awards, MTV Movie Awards, NAACP Image Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the Soul Train Music Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Miss Universe Pageant. That’s a lot of acceptance speeches and people being played off by the orchestra.

Fun Fact: As I mentioned on Friday’s group post, I actually was a seat-filler for the Emmy Awards in 2005 at the Shrine! It was also where we had my graduation from film school at USC.

Food Trucks

Photo courtesy of Kogi BBQ

I know food trucks are everywhere now but I’d like to think Los Angeles was where it first became a “thing.” The portable food trend boom began about ten years ago, when a truck with an on-board kitchen pulled up outside of a nightclub and started hawking Korean tacos during the let out. Though Kogi may have been the first gourmet food truck, it certainly wasn’t the last. In the ensuing decade, hundreds have popped up, each more creative than the one before it.

Like everything in Hollywood, they’d gone from hot to passé, but they hadn’t gone away. Every day, trucks hit different locations in the city, using Twitter and the like to let LA’s hungry know exactly where’d they’d be during the lunch and dinner rush. It wasn’t uncommon for five or six trucks to line up back to back on the same busy street.

Fun Fact: I used to be a hard-core Kogi addict when I was in L.A. And every time I went, I got the short rib tacos. I still dreams about them and I’ve been gone for 7 years!

**This is an excerpt of a post I did for Mystery Fanfare magazine. You can check out the entire post here.

What about you? Have you been to any of these places in LA? And how important is it for you to recognize locations in books you read?

Congratulations on the launch! We used to live at the foot of Runyon, and hiked it all the time. So many celeb spottings, including Quentin Tarantino and Mia Sorvino making out when they were dating. Less fun fact: nobody ever seemed to pick up their dog poo, so the more popular it got, the more stinky and fly-ridden. And the parking is helatious. Which is why, even though we’re only a few minutes from the Mulholland Drive entrance to it, we stick to the hike in our neighborhood, Fryman Canyon. Where you walk by George Clooney, Lucy Liu, and Terri Hatcher’s houses on the way home!

Never been to Runyon Canyon, but was curious to visit until I started hearing about the dog issues.

I didn’t know food trucks were passé. Should have known, however, since I’ve started going to our weekly food truck night here in town depending on what is there. The Texas BBQ truck will almost always get me there with their steak Bbq quesadilla.